[Potoroo]

Originally Posted by MarshalLaw

Thanks for the advice and suggestions, true it is a lot of info to digest, however the last time I had to deal with this type of thing was 4 years ago. So from what I'm hearing I should look for a case that handles a 450 watt PS,

You should NOT be focussing on the claimed total wattage of the PSU. That is so last century.

You need to focus on its real 12v capacity. More and more devices are 12v these days and higher-end video cards are notoriously power hungry. Having said that, people tend to vastly overestimate their power requirements. You need to get the specs on the other components first and then generate a 12v estimate from that. There's certainly no harm in building in some headroom but too many people seem to just pick a number out of the air.

You can get a reasonable first approximation of your power requirements at http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp.

get a Motherboard that handles PCIe slots and newest generation processors, also that is Vista friendly.

You'll have a harder time finding a motherboard with AGP than PCIe, as PCIe is the current standard. Most PCIe motherboards also come with 3 PCI slots for legacy cards.

Note that the more recent chipsets are reducing their support for PATA and increasing support for SATA. For example, the nForce5 only supports one PATA channel (was two with the nForce4), meaning you can only have 2 IDE devices instead of 4, but you can have up to 6 SATA devices instead of 4. Most CD/DVD drives are still PATA but most HDs these days are SATA, which is a fine thing as they're faster and the SATA cables are vastly easier to work with and don't block your case's air flow. Having said that, don't be conned by the SATA 150MB/s v SATA II 300MB/s "spec". They are potential burst numbers that have sod all to do with sustained throughput rates, which are about the same for both SATA and SATA II as they're limited by the disk's inability to supply data at such speeds. The price difference between SATA and SATA II has come down markedly but if you do get an SATA II you'll never notice any performance difference on the desktop.

For hard disks I'd stay clear of Maxtor. I believe they've fixed their SATA NCQ bug they refused to admit existed that was causing conflicts with ASUS motherboards, but Seagate have a better warranty anyway. Seagate or WD for your HD (I use Seagate although I have days when I lust after a WD Raptor). The Benq 1650 DVD-RW is a well regarded unit if you're after a budget item. I use a Sony DRU810A myself. Light-scribe is a wank. Save your money.

Sounds like DDR2 Ram is the way to go as well. Because it makes sense to get the best core stuff that will serve me well for the next 3-4 years.

The AMD AM2 and Intel Conroe CPUs both use DDR2, and there's less price difference between DDR and DDR2 than you seem to think there is. If you're not overclocking then you should be fine with any of the brand name's "value" lines. Try to stretch to 2G if you can. SH3 will appreciate it.

Much as I hate to say it, if you're buying today then the Conroes do have the performance edge (we'll have to wait and see if the 2nd generation AM2s with the K8L architecture get back in the hunt early next year).

As for single and Dual processors, I take it that Duals will be the wave of the future, or is that it is just the lastest rage?

Multicore is here to stay. Single-cores are dead. They just don't know it yet.

As for Sound and Vid cards and the rest, I can go with slightly older Technology and upgrade later on once better stuff comes out. Sounds like I'm on the right track there Guys and Gal?

Yes and no. For SH3 you'd get away with onboard sound but not onboard graphics. With video chipsets there's a rule of thumb that says the more hyperbole is in the name the less performance they have. That means if you want decent 3D performance avoid Intel's "Extreme" or "Express" onboard graphics chipsets like the plague. Nvidia's 6200-TurboCache is moderately better as onboard graphics go. That might be able to play SH3 with some of the graphics settings turned down. Be aware that one reason onboard grahics are so slow is they come with very little dedicated video memory and instead take great chunks of your ordinary system memory.

The impending release of DX10 makes this is an interesting time to be buying a video card. Any of the current mid-range and up PCIe graphics cards will play SH3 quite happily. That roughly means Geforce 6600GT/6800GS and up. They'll also cope with Vista's Aero interface. The big question is how much you spend now if you're planning on upgrading to DX10 capability later. IOW, how long will you be content to stay with DX9? Given that Vista will launch without DX10 and the first generation DX10 cards are monsters (the Nvidia G80 GPU is set for launch in early November and the reference cards are hyuuuuge and hungry; expect ATI's first efforts to be much the same), my answer would be you'll probably be with DX9 for at least a year. My best guess at this stage is that something like a Geforce 7600GT/GS would be a good balance. They're decent cards without being ultra-high end, reasonably priced and will cope with most things people will throw at them (Oblivion doesn't count).

As for Nvidia v ATI, if you gave me an ATI card I'd give it away or sell it to some sucker on ebay. Don't be fooled by the ultra-expensive, ultra-high end Radeon X1900 XTX that currently has the edge in Nvidia and ATI's endless see-saw over who has the fastest card. You can't afford it anyway on your budget. One reason Nvidia was twice the size of ATI before AMD bought them out is that for several years now Nvidia has consistently provided more bang per price point than ATI. The other reason is that ATI's drivers suck bilge water.